Certificate number 40
for ten pounds of 4.5% debenture stock in
this London water supply company. Issued to Mrs Clara Elizabeth
Broughton of Emsley, Greenhill Road, Moseley, Birmingham.
Original signature of E Gill, company director.
Ornate left hand scrollwork with imprint of company seal.

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Established by an act of Parliament in
1722, the Chelsea Waterworks was intended to take water from the River
Thames for the Westminster area. A few years later in 1725, the company
constructed a tidal inlet which later became the Grosvenor Canal. In the
following century, the company was still using river water, but the product
was not very pure. The House of Commons in 1827 received a petition from Sir
Francis Burdett which alleged that "the water taken from the River Thames at
Chelsea, for the use of the inhabitants of the western part of the
metropolis, [is] being charged with the contents of the great common sewers,
the drainings from dunghills, and laystalls, the refuse of hospitals,
slaughter houses, colour, lead and soap works, drug mills and manufactories,
and with all sorts of decomposed animal and vegetable substances." As a
result, the "said water [is] offensive and destructive to health, [and]
ought no longer to be taken up by any of the water companies from so foul a
source."

Thereafter in 1828, the artist William
Health published a scathing caricature reflecting the public's distaste for
the water being supplied from the River Thames by London companies. He did
not mention the Chelsea Company per se, but his cartoon seemed aimed
in its direction. A year later in 1829 under the guidance of company
engineer James Simpson, Chelsea Waterworks Company became the first to
introduce slow sand filtration in order to purify their river water. The
filter was designed by Simpson and consisted of successive beds of loose
brick, gravel and sand.

In 1856, under legislative decree
(Parliament Act of 1852), the Chelsea Waterworks moved the intake up river
beyond the reach of tidal action to Surbiton (then known as Seething
Wells -- many miles up-stream along the Thames), adjoining those of the
Lambeth Waterworks Company which had also moved its intake site. There the
company had two settling reservoirs and two filter beds. In addition they
built three new reservoirs on high ground at Putney Heath. Both of these
sets of reservoirs were used by Chelsea waterworks to supply London water,
which maintained an office near the original Chelsea location, but no longer
drew water directly from the river. The Putney Heath reservoir water was
distributed by gravity to Chelsea by two 24 inch and two 12 inch diameter
pipes.